Border Tuner
Now exists as an artwork, film, book and archive.
A book and film launch tour is currently underway; please check the events page for more information.
Border Tuner / Sintonizador Fronterizo was an interactive public art installation across the US-Mexico border done by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in 2019.
It was open to the public from November 13 - 24, 2019, every night from 6:30 to 11:00 PM.
It happened between two different locations: Bowie High School, El Paso and Parque Chamizal, Ciudad Juárez
Three interactive stations on each side of the border will control powerful searchlight beams using a small dial wheel. When lights from any two stations are directed at each other, microphones and speakers automatically switch on, allowing participants to talk with one another and creating cross-border conversations.
Kerry Doyle and León de la Rosa curated the project, with programming direction from Edgar Picazo. A diverse schedule of guests opened the installation each evening, and everyone was welcome to participate for free.
More information about the project's concept is available here.
Each voice is a bridge - León de la Rosa
Border Tuner powerfully explored how public space — whether physical spaces such as public plazas or national borders, or dematerialized spaces such as social media — shape our concepts of democratic political engagement. And, equally importantly, how those spaces can be productively, indeed exuberantly reconfigured by these collective, participatory claims. - Robin Greeley, University of Connecticut, 2020
This artwork embodies light as a channel of communication and bonding. - Pedro H. Kramer Canhim, Harvard Undergraduate Journal
About the Border Tuner Book
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer expands the very notion of what public art is and can be. His works are an invitation to consider how art can rewire our shared spaces and, ultimately, our shared future. - Hans Ulrich Obrist, Curator
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is not just an artist. He is a visionary who combines heritage and technology. The final result is a profound message about our humanity. - Marina Abramović, Artist
“Lozano-Hemmer has the rare ability to transform public spaces into intimate, poetic moments that prompt us to reflect on who we are. His work turns our act of listening into an active exercise of citizenship.”
—Tania Bruguera, Artist and Activist
About RLH
Rafael is the creator of entertaining, technologically inspired, interactive creations that people line up to try, and at the same time, a somewhat macabre intellectual with a penchant for social criticism. - Ted Loos, New York Times
Lozano-Hemmer's "Voz Alta" is one of the brightest social interventions in Latinamerican Art. I say this to transmit the excitement of experimenting a new form of interaction alternative to the authoritarian space of mass media. - Cuauhtémoc Medina, Reforma